


pinion

by alcibiades



Category: Captain America (Movies), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Touching, Daemons, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:17:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2653355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcibiades/pseuds/alcibiades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time that new operatives saw the Winter Soldier - if their clearance level was even high enough - they usually didn't see his daemon. This had led to a persistent rumor that the Soldier did not have a daemon at all, and there was little effort to put an end to that particular rumor, as it was a useful rumor. It promoted obedience, fear. A man without a daemon was no man at all, but rather something else. Something far more terrifying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pinion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mr-finch (soubriquet)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/gifts).



The first time that new operatives saw the Winter Soldier - if their clearance level was even high enough - they usually didn't see his daemon. This had led to a persistent rumor that the Soldier did not have a daemon at all, and there was little effort to put an end to that particular rumor, as it was a useful rumor. It promoted obedience, fear. A man without a daemon was no man at all, but rather something else. Something far more terrifying.

He did, of course, have a daemon. She was very good at remaining hidden, though, and truthfully it was almost more frightening to see her: You would see the Soldier, dressed all in black, of course, and then a white thing winging down to land on his shoulder. All white, except for her black eyes, her black face. Her talons still black where they gripped the Soldier's tactical jacket.

She looked just like the Soldier. She looked like death.

+++

He didn't remember a lot from immediately after the train, but he remembered this: All her feathers fell out.

It was a gradual thing - first she simply favored her left wing, unable to fly, and then the big pinion feathers started to drop off, one by one, until they were all gone. It wasn't just that, though; they kept coming off her, first the flight feathers, and then the downy fluff underneath, until she was naked and shivering, like him, on the floor of the cell.

He thought she would die. He held onto her, crying, stroking her naked skin, her beak, the few feathers that remained clustered around her dull eyes.

She had stopped talking to him a while ago.

He did not know what would happen if she died, only that he wouldn't be able to stand it, wouldn't be able to go on - not that what was happening to him now was living, or going on. Half the time he did not feel like he existed at all, and as the days went by, days that he couldn't count or keep track of, he started to feel less and less like a person, less and less like anything real.

Eventually, he forgot her name.

+++

Her feathers came back all white. She didn't talk, but neither did he, unless he was required to. It didn't matter. He didn't need to talk to her; she was privy to his tactics, his training. She could be depended on.

Sometimes he had the strangest flashes of memory -- he could remember her, large and beautiful, preening her iridescent feathers, spreading her wings so that they'd catch the sun just so. He could remember her glossy, gregarious, perched on his shoulder, preening his hair, nipping his ear with her beak when she was irritated with him.

Steve had said, "Bucky, she's just -- look at her, she's so pretty," reaching out like he wanted to touch her, and the Soldier had laughed, and said --

Who was Steve? It was incorrect, it had to be. He was inconsistent, unpredictable. He needed to be wiped.

+++

Upstate New York. The shape of a hawk, across the blue sky. The Soldier's daemon watched the hawk, waiting, nestled among snowy tree branches. He thought: He knew that hawk. He knew a bird like it once. _Accipiter cooperii._ The Cooper's hawk. 

It was irrelevant to the mission. The Soldier's daemon watched for a moment longer and then took flight as well, moving to a tree which would provide a better vantage point in order to watch the group of people appear from the building. 

The Soldier readied his rifle. He watched the door, and his daemon. The hawk wheeled in the sky, hunting, but the Soldier did not watch the hawk.

He took the shot, when it came. Red spray on white snow; the crowd scattered. It reminded him of something -- red on white, something, something -- but he could not remember what. 

+++

\-- "She's just a raven, Steve." _Corvus corax_. The common raven. The largest passerine bird. Distributed across the entire Northern Hemisphere, so prevalent that it was at times considered a pest species.

She was beautiful. There was intelligence in her big bright eyes, and her voice was like music. She was vivacious, playful. She sat preening Ruby, and they often nestled together to sleep, their wings tucked over each other protectively, when Steve and Bucky were just talking to each other in the late hours of the night. Ravens mated for life. After finding a mate, they would spend the rest of their lives defending their territory.

Steve and Bucky were the only two boys in their class whose daemons had settled as birds. Sometimes Bucky wondered if she'd settled that way because Ruby had decided on being a hawk. It didn't matter; he didn't mind.

+++

He saw how the others were with their daemons. Rumlow's big German Shepherd daemon, who he coddled, petting her furry ruff while her tongue lolled out. Pierce's Roxana, who draped herself over his feet when he sat, who Pierce would stroke from shoulder to hip as she walked beside him with her hunting-cat grace. 

The Soldier could not ever remember his daemon wanting to be touched. She would land on his shoulder sometimes, and sit there like a statue, and he could feel her weight, her claws clenching in the fabric of his jacket, but she did not want to be touched. Perhaps this was also because the Soldier did not want to be touched -- or rather, he had no need of it, unless it was functional. Unless it was for a purpose.

The men pushed him back into the chair -- he was acting inappropriately. He was inconsistent. He needed to be wiped. It would be better, when he was wiped. That blankness, the emptiness. Nothing to reach back for.

His daemon sat in the corner of the room, perched on a windowsill. She watched the men push him back into the chair. The last thing he saw before the electricity turned everything white was the slight movement as she resettled her wings.

+++

The man on the bridge said, "Bucky?" and then, "Lily? Lillian? Oh my god, is that Lillian?"

The Soldier did not know how to answer. He did not know who Bucky was, or Lillian.

+++

It didn't hurt. Steve was tentative at first, his fingers barely touching her feathers, and then all at once he cradled her to his chest, running his hand over her from head to tail. It didn't hurt. "Bucky," he whispered, his face pressed against her back. "Bucky, is it okay?"

"It doesn't hurt," said Bucky. Something strange gathered inside of him, a knot in his stomach that felt like it was pulling him toward Steve. It had been there since they had left the Hydra base. The whole walk back to camp. "It feels -- it feels good."

"I thought I'd never see you again," Steve said, so quiet, so changed from the way Bucky had known him before. Ruby sat a little removed from all of this at the corner of the tent, her feathers all puffed up nervously. Steve was touching Bucky's daemon, running his fingers over her beak. She was reaching up to preen his hair. This was not supposed to be done, but Steve had never really been good at not doing things he was not supposed to do. The fact that Bucky was here at all was proof enough of that.

+++

The Soldier's daemon landed on his shoulder. Her talons clenched in tight, so tight that he could feel them even through the thick fabric of his jacket. The man -- Captain America -- was still staring at them. He had a daemon too, a big brown-and-white-barred hawk which landed on his outstretched arm, the arm not holding the shield.

The Soldier's daemon shifted. For a moment she mantled, her wings coming forward like a shroud, and then she settled again.

"Steve," she said. " _Steve_."

**Author's Note:**

> This idea would not get out of my head, a fact for which I fear we may only have [this video to blame. ](http://youtu.be/aMBhYn66uzk)
> 
> SOON: Something more substantial.


End file.
